Another bank holiday comes around and that’s August almost over and done with. Somebody commented that it will be officially autumn in a fe days time. Goodness!
But because it’s a bank holiday Granddaughter Number Two gets double pay for working today, for which she is quite grateful as she is an impoverished student! Mind you, being an impoverished student does not prevent her from spending quite large amounts of money on tattoos. But it’s her decision.
I’ve been reading articles about Kirstie Allsopp letting her teenage son go interrailing around Europe with a friend after they finshed their GCSE exams. Much was made of the fact that he was only 15 - except that when you look into it he’s in fact very nearly 16. She describes him as “summer born”, so I’m assuming he”s an August birthday. Kirstie Allsopp wrote about it as part of an article on how we need to give our children more freedom to roam. And now, it seems, someone has reported her to social services and she is now being observed for neglecting her son!!
I would imagine that it’s probably a good deal safer to go interrailing than hitch-hiking which many of us (well, not me personally but plenty of people I knew) did when we were 16 or not much older.
Children nowadays are much more “timetabled”, with masses of organised after-school activities, rather than just that mysterious activity “playing out”. People of my generation get quite nostalgic about a childhood where you went out to play and were out for hours, without a care in the world on anyone’s part so long as you were home in time for tea. I think most of us did tell our parents more or less where we going and, certainly in my case, there were places that we knew we were not supposed to go. But it’s all run into a kind of nostalgic freedom-filled time, just as all the summers of our childhood were sun-filled (but not too hot) and amazingly went on for far longer than the six weeks of the school holidays! If all our stories are true, we were all members of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and sailed on Windermere with the Swallows and Amazons.
Yesterday my daughter showed me a T-shirt belonging to her smallest son. It was washed when they were on holiday (air b&b washing machine) and has come out with a few odd marks. Did I think I could do anything with it?, she wondered. I don’t known that I have the necessary skills but I thought to myself that it will always serve to “play out” in. And then I wondered if that is still a thing: having best clothes, school uniform and clothes to play out in. Another bit of nostalgia.
I was reading this article about how the way women are seen has changed over the ages. As well as explaining that life-creating goddesses became merely the consorts of life-creating male gods, it largely features a Dutch woman, Mineke Schipper, who went to live and work in the Congo in the 1960s. Apparently her parents cried when she set off with her husband, convinced they would never see her again - “My parents were weeping in the airport, because they said, ‘We’ll never see this daughter back.’” - just think of that, Kirstie Allsopp!
One thing that struck me was attitudes towards children that she encountered :
“Schipper had her first child while in the Congo, which opened another vista of traditional wisdom. She and her husband, she said, were surprised when their neighbours came to thank them after the baby was born: “It means you have contributed new energy, new power to the community by having a baby. I found this very beautiful.””
What a splendid idea! Not ‘congratulations on having a baby’, making it purely an individual family matter, but ‘thanks for bringing new life into the community’. We need more of that!
As regards community and how things should be in our society, I also read about the problems of NHS nurses from overseas. The article I read explained that nurses on temporary visas are unable to access benefits because of rules that deprive people coming to work in the UK of welfare benefits for five years after they arrive. And so they are being pushed into poverty and having to take out loans to make ends meet. But surely the answer should not be to change the rules so that they can claim benefits. Rather the answer must be that all nurses should be paid enough to manage without benefits.
There is something wrong with our society if workers such as nurses and teachers have to claim benefits and use food banks in order to make ends meet and to feed their families.
Unfortunately that seems to be modern reality!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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